One Million Children National Conference 2019 was inspiring!
The One Million Children Conference was the best conference for me this year; a time of encouragement to do things well, some great ideas, and I felt challenged on several occasions over the two days.
Some highlights:
We need to take a really good look at what we are running and why we are running it. Are we doing it with Heart or are we doing it as a task or even worse are we doing it just because we have always done it as it was terrific back in 1970 something? We need to have a lot of heart in what we are doing. This doesn’t mean we quit if we don’t have it at the moment, but it does mean we seek God and ask Him how we can better contribute to reaching the 1 million Children in New Zealand. Knowing your reason for what you are doing is the key, or in other words, "What do you want to achieve?" God has gifted us all - do you know what your gift is? One frequent encouragement was, “Do what God has gifted you to do and do lots of it.”
Here are a few things I want to work on:
Avoid a Yawn-A-Thon. Deliver the Gospel in a way Children can embrace it. Check out the website Max 7 for animated children’s stories. E.g., the “Wild Stories about Jesus” series.
Understand our audience - What is their background? What is their family life like? How old are they? What is their cultural influence? Do they know anything about Christianity?
Speak in a language they understand. Avoid Christianese like "you need to be born again." Instead, you could say you need to restore your relationship with God through accepting the gift of Jesus.
Always be genuine and authentic - that’s the glasses the children look through to believe what we are saying.
Knowing your goal is very important and it should involve multiplying workers. Have you ever thought about who you could train up with the aim they could either plant another session of your children's programme or take over from you so you can plant a second session at your church or at another location? “The purpose of an apple tree is to produce apple trees, not just apples!”
I want to encourage all Children's Ministry leaders to attend next year's One Million Children conference. We need to act now to reach the Children of New Zealand. The next generation will thank us for it. I’m planning to be there, hope you can too.
God bless,
Tony Foster - NZ Rally Facilitator